Focus
by Jolie
Summary: RENT fic about the relationship between Mark and Roger and its various issues. Takes place roughly between Halloween and sometime after the end of the musical.


Part one of maybe three or four.  It's mostly based on the timeline of the musical, though altered slightly to fit my purposes.  Any comments would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

They're not mine. 

***

            Now, when I look back on it from a safe distance, it's almost impossible to believe that it all really happened.  It's like a dream I had when I was just on the edge of being awake.  Sure, it had felt real at the time, but it couldn't have been anything more than a product of my own consummate imagination kicked into over-drive by stress and loneliness.  Life was never as visceral or as vivid as it seems to me that it was in that short, stolen time.

            On some level, I know that this is true, that I'm deceiving myself.  Memory is one of the most faulty of all human abilities.  Mine in particular is very fluid and prone to biases and inaccuracies.  But logically I _know_ that it's only in retrospect that my life in the freezing, bare-walled loft with artists and philosophers seems deeply dramatic and stirring and vital and swelling with climatic music.  At the time I was hungry and poor, with blue hands and a sick roommate, and that pain held none of the bohemian romance that it seems to hold now that I can regularly afford to both buy food and pay the heating bill.

            Those moments with him, though, they come back to me in startling, unidealized detail.  Like the night he came back.  I can relive every moment of it, can actually _see_ myself going through it again, as if I was watching a film of it and not merely staring into space, reliving my own memories.  I can see my eyes fly open at the creak of a familiar spot in the living room floor, can watch my breath still as I strain to hear more, to figure out if it's an unfortunate burglar thinking that perhaps he will find something worth stealing or if it's actually him coming back.

Sleep had become something of a luxury for me in the days and weeks after he had disappeared, driven by fear and anger onto the choked, dirty highways, heading west in the '86 Chevy Berretta he had bought with the money he had obtained from pawning his Fender.  Most nights I would work as long as I could stay awake, scrawling notes across a legal pad and rewatching clips of footage until my eyes were bleary and aching so that I could collapse into bed and fall asleep before I had time to think.  I knew that without work I would start spending the days simply waiting for him to come back, and then each day that I woke up waiting and each night that I went to sleep alone in that loft would be wasted.  I would waste my life away.  So I buried myself under two or three layers of my thickest sweaters in an attempt to keep out the sting of the New York cold - although it was in vain, the cold had long ago settled into my bones - and worked on the footage I had shot over that previous year, trying to build it into something cohesive and meaningful.  I was always tired, but I pushed myself mercilessly, trying in frustration to rub the sleepiness out of my eyes and make them focus, because I knew that without this drive to produce _something_ the futility that was threatening to rock my sanity would crush me.  I was trying to reconstruct the world I had known before it had fallen apart with alarming speed.  

Angel was dead.  _Dead._  The word had no meaning but through experience, and I now finally understood exactly what dead meant.  My grandmother had passed away, but Angel was dead, and that didn't just mean gone, in a better place, out of sight out of mind.  Dead meant something entirely different, and I now knew why people never used that word to describe someone they had cared about.  

Collins was trying to hold up the pretense of being fine.  Sometimes he was, and on those days you could see the guilt at being fine hovering over his every word and expression.  As though he knew that being able to smile was a desecration to Angel's memory, a slap to his cold, unseeing face.  Whether from the grief or the guilt, he ended most nights by drinking himself into an unthinking, unfeeling stupor.  I didn't blame him.  Sometimes I joined him in fact, and on those nights I was quietly convinced that he had really discovered something.  Drinking yourself into oblivion was considerably easier than working yourself to that state. 

Mimi was gone, and I couldn't find her.  I didn't know if she was dead or dying somewhere, probably couldn't have done anything about it if I had.  

Maureen had drifted from the scene and Joanne with her, and though it stung me to know that she was unable or unwilling to hang around through the bad stuff, I knew that it was as natural as it was inevitable.  Maybe we had seemed like a happy little surrogate family, and maybe I clung to that image a little too tightly sometimes, but it had never _really_ been that way.  Except maybe for that one night, for Christmas Eve.  The rest of the time people came and went, fought and broke up, died and moved away, and all with little drama or even notice.  _That_ was life.  In truth, Roger and Maureen had never gotten along and could not be reconciled to one another.  Believe me, I had beat my head against that wall for years, and there was nothing to be done.  Joanne had always had trouble abiding Collins's complete lack of respect for the system, his disavowal of his own obligation to it.  She thought his impetuous, anarchist ways were simply immature and pretentious.  As for me, Mimi's wild nature and the sheer volume of her personality had often worn on my nerves.  She could be truly exhausting to be around, and I had difficulty trusting her and the 'only today' philosophy by which she lived her life.  Roger's well-being had been my sole concern for months, after all, and old habits die hard.  So you see, a photograph taken of us would have suggested something entirely different from the truth.  We would have looked like a happy group, all there for each other, each filling his own place to complete the picture, but that's unrealistic, not the way things really worked.  I guess that's why I've always preferred film.  It's still artifice, which can't be dispensed of entirely, but it's truer none the less.  Truth is found in motion, not stillness.

            But it wasn't Maureen or Mimi or even Angel who kept me from my bed, and I knew it.  It was Roger.  I knew that the second I laid down, with nothing in my hands and nothing to occupy my thoughts, I would think of him.  And that could be nothing but bad for me.  Maybe I tended to revel in my own pain, masochistic little artist that I was, but we all have our limits.  Roger was mine.

            I had burst out of the little Episcopalian chapel during Angel's funeral, well before the ceremony was over.  Until that point, I had managed to hold it together relatively well by slipping into the version of myself that was the most comfortable and strong.  'Mark the Caretaker', 'the Dependable One', my foil to Roger's 'Bitter, Wounded Rockstar' and Maureen's 'Melodramatic Emotional Whirlwind'.  It wasn't a part that I resented playing, in fact I was rather fond it, but at some point the heat and crying and laughing in that chapel had become oppressive and dismantling, and I thought shakily 'fuck it, she was my friend, I can react however the fuck I want'.  That's the one good thing about funerals, no one is allowed to expect anything of you.  And so I left.  Stumbled outside into the biting October air, sat cross-legged in the grass and tried to calm my breathing as I waited.  Waited to hear the door open quietly behind me and feel his hands come to rest gently on my shoulders as he bent down behind me.

            "You okay," he had said.  It was not quite a question, but I nodded nonetheless.

            "I'm not," he replied, his voice low and deliberately calm.

Okay, so we were going to tell the truth.  I laughed shakily. "Yeah, me neither."

            "I think I'm worse."

            "Yeah, I think you probably are," I replied, turning my head to look at him for a moment.  I could see it in his eyes, this kind of dull shock, like the numb horror you can see in the faces of survivors of terrible car accidents or fires or earthquakes.  Roger knew what dead meant now too.  And it was a considerably harder lesson for him than it was for me.

            There was a question burning on my tongue, but I wasn't sure if I was ready to ask it yet.  Not a word had passed between us about his sudden decision to leave New York, and I wasn't sure if now was the time or place to finally broach it.  It just might drive us both over the edge of control, but if I waited much longer he would be gone without a word.

            "Why are you leaving?" I asked in a small, tight voice, slightly surprised at how pained I sounded.  I squinted into the window of a shop across the street, not because I was particularly interested but because there seemed to be nothing else to do.

            He sighed and sat in the grass behind me, settling his arms around my shoulders in a loose embrace.  I leaned back against him, wondering idly how he could always be so warm even when it was so bitterly cold.  I was so cold.

            "I have to Mark.  I can't be here anymore.  There's nothing for me here anymore," he replied.  He smelled like soap and cigarettes, a combination that only he would dare to pull off, bundled mass of strange, but not necessarily unappealing, contradictions that he was.  

            "There's me," I said, my heart not quite making it into my throat, though I suspected he could hear it anyway.  His fingers traced lazy patterns against my shoulders as his head came to rest against my neck.

            "I know that," he whispered contritely into my skin. 

            "But I'm not enough."  Maybe it was wrong, but I wanted him to feel guilty.  Wanted him to know the depth of my own self-pity, wanted him to be stunted and torn by my dependence on him.  Just... _wanted_ him.

            "Mark... I..."

            I took a moment to revel in his clumsy struggle for words before shaking my head to silence him, feeling now sorry for what I had said and the ugly emotions it revealed.  I didn't want to talk, just wanted to feel the warmth and solidity of his body against mine for maybe the last time.  I needed that more than answers anyway.  My hands settled over his arms, and for a long time we just sat there without thinking, our breathing falling into alignment. 

            "There's really nothing?" I finally asked at length, hesitant to break the silence.

            "Nothing but you."

            "What about Mimi?" I asked, knowing that I was treading on dangerous ground.

            I felt his body tense slightly, and he took a long time in answering.

            "What about her?" came his reply.

            "You love her," I said.  He immediately stood, disentangling himself from me. "You might never say it, but I know you do.  So why pretend like you don't?  Like you don't need her?"

            He lit a cigarette and took a long, slow drag off of it. "I don't need her," he said brusquely, flicking ashes to the ground in a fretful gesture. "I don't."

            The extension of his thought lay in the air.  It floated past me, as clearly as if I had heard him say it.

            _I don't need anyone._

            I plucked the grass at my feet, shredding it between my fingernails, somehow angry at him for something he hadn't even said.

            "Someday you'll get tired of running, Roger," I bit out. "You can't be an emotional gypsy forever; eventually you're going to want someone to be with."

            He looked at me, smiling lightly, knowing that I was upset with him and trying to win me back. "Emotional gypsy?" he repeated in a gently mocking tone. "I should write that down."

            "You should.  Seriously Roger, what are you going to accomplish by leaving?  Don't you want to be around people who love you?  Like Mimi.  Don't you _want_ someone to share your life with?"

            "Well Mark, that necessitates _having _a life, doesn't it?" he quipped, the edge of his bitterness coming through his forced smile.

I looked away from him, feeling an absurd pricking at the back of my eyes.  "You know what I mean."  How dare he use his disease against me like that.  As if I didn't realize that he was going to die.  As if I hadn't spent enough sleepless nights at his bedside in the hospital or gone through that entire funeral thinking of how much harder it was going to be when it was him, how they might as well bury me that day too.

            "I know what you mean, Mark, but it's not like that with Mimi.  I..." he sighed, clearly irritated at his inability to find the right words. "Damnit, I don't know how to explain it to you.  We're not _meant_ to be that way.  We can't be each others lifelines, or we'd both drown.  Do you understand?  Mimi and I would kill each other."

            "No, I don't understand," I said, so frustrated at the idea of him throwing away the only thing that had made him happy in months, at the idea of him leaving.  In truth, the only words I would have been able to comprehend coming out of his mouth at that moment were _I'm staying_. "She saved you last year, you'd have died if it weren't for her."

            "No Mark," he said, and suddenly he was crouching beside me, his hand on my chin, coaxing my eyes up into his. "_You_ saved me."  He touched my cheek with his fingertips. "She just got me out of the house."

            I stared up into his eyes, confused.  

            "That's not true," I murmured. "I never.. it was her..." 

            "Mark," he sighed sadly. "It was never anyone but you."

            And then, catching some new, but familiar, look in his cool green eyes, I was suddenly afraid that I _was_ understanding what he was saying.  My eyes dropped to the grass, blood roaring through my ears, unable to meet the urgency and honesty of his gaze.

            "No, Mark, please don't do that.  Don't pretend this isn't happening, that I'm not saying these things finally.  Come on, look at me!"

Maybe I was about to.  Or maybe he was about to force my eyes back up into his where I wouldn't have been able to hold on to my old, stubborn conception of the truth anymore, but then she was there.  We heard the door open and close behind us and turned to find her leaning against the metal railing that supported the chapel's covered walkway.  She looked even colder than I felt, and there was something in her eyes, some kind of hollowness that I had never seen there before.  Roger's hands clenched and he stood, and I could almost feel the crack of him retreating back into himself, like a door slamming shut.  The service was evidently over, and the rest of our 'little family' began to drift out of the chapel and towards us.  I felt the ambush coming almost as certainly as he must have. 

            It seemed like ages, but it must only have been minutes until all the screaming and crying was over and we were left alone again, clinging to our fragile senses of stability even as the biting wind and echoes of the words that had been said threatened to snatch them away.  

I guess what happened next could be fairly laid at my feet.  I knew I had made a mistake the moment the words about Angel left my mouth, but I wasn't thinking clearly enough to sensor myself before I spoke.  I had _meant_ that we had to try to take something out of this, that we should learn to appreciate each other more while we had the chance because of it, but I was instantly sure that that wasn't the way he was going to take it.  How could I have possible suggested to him that the death of a dear friend could be in any way a good thing, that it could _helpful_, as though that was all it meant?  I had just wanted to give him some reason to stay, but my plan had severely miscarried.  Still, I didn't realize just how deeply I had hurt and angered him until he threw down that gauntlet of brutal honesty and forced me to play a part in it.

I can remember every word he said to me, though I try not to.  Sometimes when I think back on that day I can block out the individual words and phrases that had seemed to actually tear into me, but I still get a hollow, sick feeling when I remember how terribly they had hurt.  At the time, I was almost crippled by the pain.  I tried once, feebly, to escape him, but he had scoffed at my escape and pulled me closer as he continued to systematically dismantle every illusion I had ever clung to, embracing and apologizing and wounding all at the same time.  I must have done something truly horrible to deserve the things he said.  It was only as he was leaving that I managed to recover from my frozen speechlessness just enough to hurl one sting his way, one last barb about his leaving.  Then I sank back down into the grass, gasping, feeling as though I were slowly bleeding to death from the wounds he had so intentionally inflicted.

It was not as if I was unaware of most of the insights he had hurled at me like weapons.  I might have been seriously flawed when it came to dealing with others, but I was nothing if not self-aware.  Did he think that I didn't realize that I was unable to connect with people, with reality?  I struggled with it every day.  I knew I was detached and emotionally unapproachable and that my loneliness was entirely of my own making.  But a large part of our friendship was based on the understanding that some things, however true and apparent they might be, never needed to be said.  I had trusted him to never give voice to those things, the same way he had trusted me.  We had either failed or finally come through for each other that day, but regardless of which it was, part of me was now quietly convinced that he was never coming back.

            But maybe I had been wrong.  I could only hope that I had been as I lay there in the dark, hearing careful footsteps approach my door.  The door creaked open slowly, a small shaft of light falling across the room to the wall that I lay staring at, motionless, clutching my pillow beneath my head.  Maybe I was still dreaming. 

            The weight of someone sitting down on the other side of the mattress and his shaking hand coming to rest gently on my shoulder, however, was unmistakable.  I rolled over, looking up into his thin, tired face, my relief an almost palpable force.  His eyes were dark and bloodshot, and he pulled me immediately into a fierce hug.

            "I'm sorry," he whispered brokenly again and again, rocking me slightly in his tight, almost desperate, embrace. "Oh God Mark, I'm so sorry."


End file.
